How to be successful in maintaining a distributed AGILE environment?
Companies evaluate their AGILE software development practices often to check if they are still getting the returns they need from it and improve or change the practices if necessary. This is important in progressing as a company and and making sure that AGILE aligns with what you expected to get out of it. As such, there are several statistics that are produced but on individual companies. Here, I aim to summarize some of the common methods and practices that improve the entire team that I have found in the various studies. These studies interview and survey a wide range of companies that use AGILE methodologies. But first, I will define what it actually means to have a successful AGILE project. Success of AGILE project * Quality - The quality of the project is not compromised and comes out as expected * Scope - All the requirements of the project are met * Cost - Cost of the project did not exceed what was expected * Time - Project is completed on the expected time limit Management related factors: The support from the directors and upper management makes a big difference to operations at the company. This could propel a place to be more focused culture-wise. There also has to be a common belief in the company that the It also helps to have a lesser gap between managers and subordinates in the management hierarchy. This emphasizes open communication of ideas in the company. Proper training and familiarity with the entire process was also cited as being important along with an appropriate reward system for the developers. People related factors: Having a team with the correct expertise and talent is pivotal to the functioning of the AGILE software team. In fact, we could go so far as to say AGILE is not effective without a team that is able to think on its feet, delegate responsibility and adapt to circumstances fast enough as the workflow moves very fast in this environment. The next responsibility lies with the project managers, who need to ensure that they are in sync with the team, the client and the higher management. They should be effective at relaying communication between all three parties. These measures particularly improve the quality and scope criteria of success. Process related factors: Strong communication has been found to be the most important factor for most AGILE frameworks around different companies. Key to this is face-to-face communication along with a strong client presence with technical knowledge at every step of the way. There has to be efficient project management,in the sense that the time of the developers is respected, so they do not get caught up in bureaucratic work. Technology related factors: Technologically, there should be a clear and effective protocol that everyone knows about and that everyone knows how to follow. There should be a strong coding structure, style and commenting format. Documentation should be made whenever possible and updated regularly. There should be unit testing at every level of integration into the company's ecosystem. There should never be too much of a backlog of tasks on the AGILE board as workers should be able to complete tasks within the allocated time. This saves on the time success attribute. Extra measures: 1) Establish Continuous Integration This makes sure that any test or build issues are discovered immediately, thus, making correction faster and less prone to obstruction. This also avoids the usual case where several different teams work on a large project together, and integrate their code together at the end of the project. This practice reduces time cost of debugging and building code. 2) Create shared vision among developers When all the developers are working together, there is a greater sense of cohesion and work gets done better. This is the best way to also ensure that everyone is up to date on the state of the code. Nobody is left behind and thus, even as team sizes grow and there is plenty of challenges around, there will not be much of an issue with scalability. This requires great communication channels. Thus, to replace face-to-face meetings, one should use the appropriate video conferencing channels and whenever possible, use the daily stand ups. 3) Create shorter sprints This reduces the gap in communication times between the different parties involved in a project. For example, the client will talk more frequently to the developers now. This ensures that they always have a good rapport an that the sprint is still manageable. The longer sprints should be reserved for groups that are geographically closer. The more difficult and bigger the group is, the shorter the sprint should be to eliminate any difference in productivity. These are all areas that affect the company's AGILE frameworks and that ensure the success of the company in the long run. So, each company should ensure that they hire effectively, train their workers properly and keep up the AGILE methodology in their practices as time goes on to reap the full benefits of these approaches. References: # Misra, Subhas Chandra, Vinod Kumar, and Uma Kumar. "Identifying some important success factors in adopting agile software development practices." Journal of Systems and Software 82.11 (2009): 1869-1890. # Chow, Tsun, and Dac-Buu Cao. "A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects." Journal of systems and software 81.6 (2008): 961-971. # Power, Damien J., Amrik S. Sohal, and Shams-Ur Rahman. "Critical success factors in agile supply chain management-An empirical study." International journal of physical distribution & logistics management 31.4 (2001): 247-265. # Stankovic, Dragan, et al. "A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects in former Yugoslavia IT companies." Journal of Systems and Software 86.6 (2013): 1663-1678. # Shiralige, Avienaash, et al. “Distributed Agile:10 Good Practices of Successful Teams.” Agile Buddha : Demystifying Agile, Getting to Its Core, 10 Aug. 2013, www.agilebuddha.com/agile/distributed-agile10-good-practices-of-successful-teams/.